Australia and the US, the world’s 2 strongest supporters of Israel, voted no to a UN Security Council motion for Palestinian freedom and statehood that failed because a further 5 pro-Apartheid Israel countries abstained from voting. The civilized world in 2015 faces worsening threats from nuclear weapons, poverty and climate change, and must impose comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel and its supporters – if it cannot secure freedom for 4.3 million Occupied Palestinians after 48 years what hope is there that it can achieve action on existential threats to the 7 billion people of Humanity as a whole?

According to the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “A Palestinian proposal calling for peace with Israel within a year and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories by late 2017 failed to pass a UN Security Council vote on Tuesday [30 December 2014]. Eight member states voted in favor of the Palestinian bid: Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxemburg, Argentina and Chile. The bid would have required the support of nine member states to pass, although in that case Israel had expected the U.S. to veto the resolution. The United States and Australia voted against the measure, while U.K., Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania, and South Korea abstained” [1].

This decision is a slap in the face of Humanity in that it permits the continuing Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine and merits the strongest possible reaction of the civilized world through Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) not just against Israel, but also against its key supporters the genocidal colonization-based Apartheid states of America and Australia and those cowardly pro-Apartheid Israel states which abstained from the vote, namely the U.K., Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania, and South Korea.

It is now the beginning of 2015 and the world is facing acutely dangerous threats from nuclear weapons (that could wipe out 7 billion human beings tomorrow), poverty (that already kills about 17 million people every year) and climate change (noting that 5 million people die from carbon burning (4.5 million) and climate change (0.5 million) each year and that unaddressed, man-made climate change is projected to kill about 10 billion people this century).

World governments representing 7 billion people are running out of time to deal with these 3 critical threats and this latest anti-Palestinian vote of the UN Security Council demonstrates that even freedom for 4.3 million Occupied Palestinians – supported overwhelmingly by members of the UN General Assembly – continues to be blocked by Israel, America, Australia and pro- Israel US lackeys.

Accordingly governments and ordinary citizens around the world need to take resolute action against Israel and Israel-supporting states through Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of the kind that were successfully applied by Humanity against the obscenity of neo-Nazi in Apartheid South Africa. Indeed in our intensely advertising-, competition-, and market-based capitalist world we are enjoined to exercise free choice in purchase of goods and services. Would you buy coffee produced by slave labor? Would you buy soap made in Auschwitz? Would you buy goods and services from states supporting Israeli human rights abuse, war crimes and genocide?

History ignored yields history repeated and it is accordingly important to record the appalling complicity in human rights abuse, war crimes and genocide of Israel and the pro- Israel states on the UN Security Council. A useful reference for this analysis is my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes an avoidable mortality–related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web [2].

Israel. In 1880 there were 0.5 million Indigenous Palestinians in Palestine and 25,000 Jews (half of them immigrants); Jews represented one third of the population by 1948; and even today Indigenous Palestinians represent about 50% of the population of the former Mandated Palestine which is composed of 6.0 million Jewish Israelis, 1.7 million Indigenous Palestinian Israelis (third class citizens under race-based Apartheid laws), 0.3 million non-Jewish and non-Arab Israelis, and 4.3 million Occupied Palestinians imprisoned in a dwindling West Bank and Gaza Strip that are in effect Israeli-run concentration camps. The Palestinian Genocide has involved 2 million Palestinians killed from violence (0.1 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.9 million) since 1936, the ethnic cleansing of 90% of Mandatory Palestine, and the generation of 7 million Palestinian refugees versus about 3,800 Zionist or Israeli deaths by the “enemy” since 1920. 3,000 under-5 Occupied Palestinian infants die each year and for an impoverished Third World country the avoidable deaths from deprivation are 1.4 times the under-5 infant deaths.

Accordingly, each year 3,000 x 1.4 = 4,200 Occupied Palestinians (and an additional comparable number of impoverished Exiled Palestinians) die avoidably from Israeli-imposed deprivation and exclusion, noting that the annual per capita income is a First World $31,537 for Israel and a Third World $2,431 for the Occupied Palestinian Territories under the heel of Israel. Of about 12 million Palestinians, 6 million (50%) are forbidden to step foot in their own country, 4.3 million Occupied Palestinians (36%) are highly abusively confined without human rights to West Bank ghettoes or the Gaza Concentration Camp and only 1.7 million Palestinian Israelis (14%) are permitted to vote for the government ruling all of Palestine, albeit as third class citizens under Nazi-style race laws. Of the 6 million Palestinians living in Palestine, 72% are excluded by Israel from voting for the government ruling all of Palestine.

Israel has militarily attacked about 12 other countries and has occupied the territory of all its neighbours. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths in countries occupied by Israel total 24 million. Israel is a nuclear terrorist rogue state with 200-400 nuclear weapons, supports and is supported by the world-dominating American Empire, has been involved in genocide further afield in Guatemala and Sri Lanka, and its very existence as a “Crusader Fortress” is intimately related to Western fossil fuel exploitation that is killing the planet.

America. America was built on invasion, dispossession, slavery, and the genocide of the Indigenous "American-Indian" inhabitants. Democracy in the US is a sham – the US has become a plutocracy, Murdochracy, lobbyocracy and corporatocracy in which “one dollar one vote” has replaced “one person one vote” and Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality and political power. Millions of African-Americans are excluded from voting by felony laws, African American wealth is 6 times less than that of White Americans, Educational Apartheid and Segregation are massive realities, and African Americans and Hispanic-Americans have about 5 times less per capita representation in Congress than Jewish-Americans. However the US didn’t stop there, has invaded a total of about 70 nations and is currently bombing about 6 countries (Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) with key targeting assistance from Australia.

America with 4.5% of the world’s population consumes 25% of the world’s resources. America dominates the One Percenters who own about 50% of the world’s wealth as compared to the bottom 50% which owns only 1%. Poverty kills and an estimated 1.5 million Americans die preventably each year. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths in countries occupied by the US in the post-1945 era total 82 million. However each year 17 million people die from deprivation on Spaceship Earth with the US in charge of the flight deck and 1.3 billion have died thus since 1950. Aided by Canada, the UK and Australia, the US is a nuclear terrorist state and is a world leader in per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution that is also acutely threatening the whole world.

Australia. Before the British Invasion in 1788, Indigenous Australians had been living in Australia for about 60,000 years. There were 350-750 different tribes and a similar number of languages and dialects, of which only 150 survive today and of these all but about 20 are endangered. After the British Invasion, the Aboriginal population dropped from about 1 million in 1788 to about 0.1 million in the first century through introduced disease, deprivation and genocidal violence.

The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the 1920s but no Treaty has ever been signed. Indigenous Australians were only counted as Australians after a referendum in 1967 and were finally given some protection by the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act that has subsequently been grossly violated by successive Coalition and Labor Right (aka Lib-Lab) Federal Governments. In the 20th century up to 1 in 10 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their mothers, the so-called Stolen Generations, but this is now continuing at a record rate.

In 2000 about 9,000 Aborigines out of an Aboriginal population of 500,000 died avoidably every year (an avoidable death rate of 1.8% pa that was the worst in the world) but this had declined to about 2,000 annual avoidable deaths out of a population about 670,000 by 2011 (an avoidable death rate of 0.4% pa, similar to that in impoverished South Asia). Indigenous Australians are far worse off than White Australians in relation to housing, health, wealth, social conditions, imprisonment, avoidable death and life expectancy. While only representing 3% of the Australian population, Aboriginal Australians make up 30% of the prison population.

There is an ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide. Australia has been involved in about 30 genocidal atrocities (mainly as a UK or US lackey), has participated in all post-1950 US Asian wars (associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or violently -imposed deprivation, most notably in Indo-China, Iraq and Afghanistan), is intimately involved in US nuclear terrorism (through the joint US-Australia spying facility at Pine Gap), has a key role in targeting war criminal US drone attacks on 6 countries, and is a world leader by far in annual per capita GHG pollution that, unaddressed, will kill 10 billion people this century.

Pro-Apartheid Israel countries that abstained. The 5 countries that abstained from voting for cessation of the Palestinian Genocide have a dirty record of genocide themselves. The UK has invaded about 170 countries, has an appalling record of genocide of Indigenous people throughout the world, is a nuclear terrorist rogue state, a climate criminal state with a huge historical Carbon Debt from GHG pollution, and through colonialism and neo-colonialism has made a huge contribution to global avoidable mortality (thus 1950-2005 avoidable deaths in countries occupied by the UK in the post-1945 era totalled 727 million and avoidable deaths in India under the British totalled 1.8 billion, with the 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British with Australian complicity in the WW2 Bengali Holocaust being one of the most horrific recent events).

Rwanda has an appalling record of genocide of both Hutus and Tutsis. Nigeria has an appalling record of human rights abuse (notably the Biafran Genocide) and of climate criminality and environmental vandalism in the Niger delta. Lithuania participated in the US Alliance’s Iraqi Genocide and pro-Nazi Lithuanian elements collaborated with the German Nazis in the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed). South Korea assisted the US in the Vietnamese Genocide and also assisted the US in the mass murder of Koreans (28% of the North Korean population was killed by US bombing in the Korean War).

The 8 member states who voted in favor of the Palestinian bid, namely Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxemburg, Argentina and Chile, are exceptional – with the exception of France – in confining any historical aggression to contiguous countries. With the exception of France (that has invaded 80 nations around the world and would have invaded many more if the British hadn’t got there first), none of these Palestine freedom-supporting countries have had overseas empires.

Conclusions

The UN Security Council voted down a motion for Palestinian Independence and freedom on Tuesday 30 December 2014 - 8 member states voted in favor of the Palestinian bid, namely Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxemburg, Argentina and Chile, but the US and Australia voted against the measure, and the UK, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania, and South Korea abstained.

Israel and its key racist supporters, the US and Australia, have appalling records as genocidal racist colonizer states that are now variously associated with human rights abuse, invasion of other countries, nuclear terrorism, other state terrorism, genocide, militarization (that is variously linked to deadly poverty that kills 17 million people annually) and greed-driven fossil fuel exploitation that is set to destroy much of Humanity and the Biosphere. The states that abstained from voting for Palestinian freedom and cessation of the Palestinian Genocide, namely the UK, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania, and South Korea, are variously linked to other genocidal atrocities and deserve sanctions for their passive complicity in Israeli and the continuing Israeli Palestinian Genocide.

Decent people around the world need to take resolute action against Israel and Israel-supporting states through Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of the kind that were successfully applied by Humanity against the obscenity of South Africa. If the world in 2015 cannot secure freedom for 4.3 million Palestinians from the genocidal and war criminal Israelis after 48 years of brutal subjugation, what hope is there that it will be able to address the acute, existential and gigantic threats to 7 billion human beings from nuclear weapons, poverty and man-made climate change?

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/.